


So a voice within me keeps repeating

by Philipa_Moss



Category: History Boys - Bennett
Genre: 5+1 Things, Friendship/Love, Getting Together, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-21
Updated: 2020-01-21
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:48:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22345123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Philipa_Moss/pseuds/Philipa_Moss
Summary: It wasn’t until a week later that Posner cornered Scripps in the philosophy section in Blackwell’s and jabbed him in the chest withA Treatise of Human Nature, and in hindsight Scripps could admire his restraint, because the first words out of his mouth were, “Why does Archie Bernard think you and Dakin are sleeping together?”
Relationships: David Posner/Donald Scripps
Comments: 17
Kudos: 46





	So a voice within me keeps repeating

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Aneelin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aneelin/gifts).



> I have never done a 5 + 1 fic before, but when Aneelin sends you a Jamie Parker tweet wherein he beautifully employs the phrase, "You're an idiot, babe," and then follows it up with the prompt, "'Five times Scripps silenced a friend by saying ‘you’re an idiot, babe’ and one time he got a loving forehead kiss instead' and other long winded fan fiction ideas tailored specifically to meeee," well, you fall in line, frankly. This is not quite that. But it is something similar. 
> 
> Title from Cole Porter's "Night and Day"

I.

“No, it’s absolutely true!” Dakin was gesticulating, insistent, hanging off Scripps like a drunken sloth. The rest of their friends—their new friends, their uni friends—stood around waiting for the point of his anecdote to emerge, not realizing that when Dakin got like this, narrative arc was more a suggestion than a rule. Scripps had already watched their faces shifts from excited to confused. They were also getting pushed closer and closer together and more people crowded into the pub. 

“What’s true?” Ella asked finally, unsure. She came up to just below Scripps’ ear and the way she was standing gave him a view directly down her top. Not that he was looking. It was hard not to look, but he wasn’t looking. It wouldn’t be right.

When Dakin turned his full attention on her, Scripps could only surmise that she blushed across her collarbones.

“Ella,” said Dakin. He let go of Scripps and looped his arm around her waist. “Ella, Ella, Ella. When’re you going to confess your love for me, hmm?”

“Okay,” said Scripps, before Ella could say anything. He reached around Archie and Amir for their jackets. “That’s enough of that. I’m taking you home.”

Dakin more or less had a girlfriend, Maggie, though they were keeping it quiet, and for once Scripps actually liked her, despite the fact that she was a particle physicist and a militant atheist and rolled her eyes whenever Scripps went off to chapel. Scripps liked Maggie because when Dakin attempted to join in the eye-rolling she jabbed him in the ribcage and said, “That’s my thing, get your own thing.” 

Dakin downed the rest of his pint and slid it untidily onto the bar behind Scripps. “It really is haunted. Oxford. Is the point I was trying to make before you so rudely—”

“You’re an idiot, babe,” said Scripps. “Let’s go. Night, all.”

“Night,” said Ella, now red to her hairline and sounding more confused than ever. 

It wasn’t until a week later that Posner cornered Scripps in the philosophy section in Blackwell’s and jabbed him in the chest with _A Treatise of Human Nature_ , and in hindsight Scripps could admire his restraint, because the first words out of his mouth were, “Why does Archie Bernard think you and Dakin are sleeping together?”

“Oh _God_ ,” said Scripps, also the picture of restraint.

“I know,” said Posner. “Or, I thought I knew.” He still looked a little wary, but relieved, and Scripps felt for him. That old sympathy pang. Posner had gone quiet, these past months, claiming overwork, and every time Scripps saw him he was less vivid than before.

“Dakin?” Scripps asked, with perhaps an unnecessary level of disgust. Still, he wanted things clear for Posner. 

“You called him ‘babe,’ apparently.” Posner cocked his head. “That’s new.”

“I know,” said Scripps, feeling oddly shy about it. The fact of the matter was, while Archie’s misinterpretation hadn’t crossed his mind, Scripps had devoted an improbable number of minutes to considering the sudden appearance of “babe.” The fact that it was casually meant made it more noteworthy, somehow. He got almost squirmy thinking about it, but it was a pleasant kind of squirmy. A platonic “babe” was almost camp. Not the way he said it, but still. And the fact that it flowed from his mouth so naturally… He couldn’t get his hands around the way it made him feel, but he knew that the feeling wasn’t unpleasant. 

“Pos,” he began, then stopped. There was nothing to ask. 

“Yes?” Posner leaned back against a shelf. His hair fell into his eyes. He looked so tired. 

“You all right?” Scripps asked. It wasn’t the first time he’d asked, and he knew already somewhere behind his breastbone that it wouldn’t be the last.

“Oh, you know me,” said Posner, as though that could ever be enough. And, Scripps thought, it almost could.

II.

Huntercombe Golf Club was a bus, then another bus, then a walk down narrow country lanes, and by the time they arrived Scripps and Dakin were soaked through. “Remind me why we’re doing this again?” Dakin asked, rubbing at his hair ineffectually with a hand towel. 

“We’re here to support Rudge,” said Scripps. His sensible green jumper was now entirely shapeless, Genteel Golf Spectator giving way to Drowned Rat. At least it was warm, one of those spring days promising summer. 

“Listen to yourself,” said Dakin. “When has Rudge ever supported us?”

And, yes, Rudge had never given any indication that he’d read any of Scripps’s half dozen _Cherwell_ contributions. But the truth was there were a handful of times—less than a handful, a handful of the handful of times he spent with Rudge in Oxford—when he could almost feel the edge of a real friendship forming. It was something about the way Rudge stared at him when Scripps said he was interested in the girl from his history tutorial. Scripps had never had a friend like Rudge before; he was unique in his unstudied skepticism, his willingness to finally be convinced. There was something comforting about Rudge. He didn’t maintain a single vision of the world. He allowed for change.

Scripps couldn’t say any of this to Dakin, of course. Dakin would laugh himself sick. So instead he said, “It’s the right thing to do.”

Dakin rolled his eyes and seemed about to comment, only right that minute Rudge burst into the toilets. 

He did a impressively unconcerned double take. “Oh, are you here?” 

“As you can see,” said Dakin. “What are you doing? Thought you’d be off rolling your trousers up or whatever it is golfers do.”

“If you must know,” said Rudge, “I’m a bit fucking nervous.”

Now that he said it, Scripps could see that Rudge was a little pale, a little clammy. “You’ve got nothing to worry about, babe.”

“Oh God,” said Rudge, and folded in half to rest his forehead against the sink.

_Babe?_ Dakin mouthed over Rudge’s back. Scripps executed what he thought was a pretty serviceable combination of _fuck off_ and _do something_ in a single open-handed gesture. 

Dakin sighed. He gave Rudge a bracing thud on the back. “We’re here to watch you take a walk, not sick this place up. Come on.”

Later on the ride back to town, after Rudge got second place, after they all shook hands, Dakin fended off all praise and fell asleep against the window, and Scripps didn’t even try to swallow his smile. Improbable enough to be at Oxford, but to be here, all together, like this? He wanted to tell Posner about it.

So when they got back to town Scripps went racing off to Posner’s rooms, but he wasn’t in. Scripps knocked a few more times, mostly for something to do, then was turning to do when the door opposite opened and a girl poked her head out. “He’s gone,” she said.

“What?”

“Yeah,” she said, coming out into the hall. “Yesterday morning. He said you might come around. He said not to worry.”

If that was supposed to be comforting it wasn’t working. Scripps’s entire core was a shuddering mass. “Not to worry? Where is he?”

“Taking some time off. You know.” She pointed at the side of her head, mercifully did not twirl her finger around in the universal sign. 

“He didn’t tell me,” said Scripps. He heard himself say it as though from a long way off. He wanted to be sick. He had to find out where Posner went. He had to—oh God—he’d probably have to call Posner’s parents to find out. 

“He said you’d come around,” the girl repeated, with less confidence. “You are Scripps, aren’t you? One of that Sheffield set?”

“Yeah,” said Scripps, thinking of Rudge, thinking of Dakin asleep against the window. Thinking of Posner slowly fading from sight. “That’s me.”

III.

“How did he look?” Akthar asked. Shouted, really. And Scripps didn’t necessarily want to be having this conversation at full volume, but Akthar was the first person to ask after Posner since term started and that meant something.

“Better,” Scripps said, but all further conversation was cut off when a very handsome, very drunk, very shirtless fresher with an acoustic guitar entered the cramped sitting room and began vigorously strumming more or less into Scripps’s ear. He smiled a pained smile at Akthar, who waved him off. Later. Later.

Not for the first time, Scripps wondered who was hosting this party. Both he and Akthar were there by invitation of Dakin, who had yet to materialize. Instead, there was a hodgepodge of graduate and undergraduate students and, bewilderingly, more than one shirtless instrument-playing fresher. Scripps suspected an initiation of some kind but an initiation to what remained unclear.

Posner did look better when Scripps last saw him, the day before Scripps boarded the train back to Oxford. He was outpatient again and not half as gaunt. Scripps didn’t ask about Oxford and Posner didn’t say anything either. They talked about music, mainly, and the fact that Scripps had at least gone on several dates with the girl from history tutorial before she dumped him for a visiting student from Australia. Scripps kept the story light, leaving out the worst parts of it, like when she said that one of the many drawbacks of seeing Scripps was that he had more sexual chemistry with the Sunday _Observer_ than he had with her. 

“Oh no,” said someone very close by, in the unmistakable register of someone about to be violently ill. Scripps turned, and found a slight blond fresher standing behind him, empty glass in hand and a dazed expression on his face. Scripps followed his gaze, which landed on the shirtless acoustic guitar player, now sans guitar, locked in a passionate embrace with a girl with purple hair. 

Without thinking, Scripps got up, nodded goodbye to Akthar, took the fresher by the elbow, and steered him out into the night. They stopped a few doors down and Scripps let go of him. The fresher still looked lost, not in the sense that he didn’t know where he was, although that was certainly possible, but in a deeper sense.

“So,” Scripps began.

“I think I might cry,” said the fresher. He had a soft voice and a light Geordie accent. He rubbed his nose. “Fair warning.”

“I’ll leave you,” said Scripps. “Will you be all right?”

But the fresher went on, speaking slowly, watching the pavement, as though the thought were still occurring to him. “I am so, so sad.”

He looked so small in the half-light of the streetlamp. Had Scripps ever been that young? “What’s your name?” asked Scripps.

The fresher looked up. “Eric.”

“Donald,” said Scripps, and stuck out his hand.

Eric took his hand like it was a live hand grenade, shook it loosely, and let it go. “Sorry,” he said.

“Don’t be sorry,” said Scripps. Then, because there was no one within earshot, “Who was it? The one with purple hair, or—”

Eric dismissed this with a swooping twirl of his hand. “Never seen her before in my life.”

“Right,” said Scripps. He smiled and Eric and nodded for him to go on. “Well, that’s all right.”

“No it’s not!” Eric shouted. “Have you missed the bit where I’m heartbroken?”

“No,” said Scripps. “That part was obvious.” 

“I didn’t like to think so,” said Eric, stiffly, quietly, “but now I am almost entirely convinced that there must be something about me that is just completely unlovable.” He stood there rigid for one second, two, then his face crumpled and he dissolved into tears.

“Oh, babe,” said Scripps. Eric sobbed harder, sagging against nothing. Scripps grabbed hold of him. “I’m sure that’s not true.”

Eric shook his head, beyond speech.

“Let me take you home,” said Scripps. “Where do you live?”

Eric hiccupped out a few more sobs, then cleared his throat. “I don’t know what about this says I’m up for it but—”

He almost wanted to laugh. It would be a long, sad laugh, so he didn’t let it out. “Not like that,” said Scripps, backing off slightly. “I want to be sure you’re safe.”

From somewhere nearby came the sound of breaking glass, followed by a whoop. Eric stared at him, considering, then sighed. “What are you like? All right. If you insist.” He cocked his arm as though he expected Scripps to take it.

Scripps did laugh then. He startled himself with it, and it startled a small smile out of Eric, too. “Lead on,” he said, and looped his arm through Eric’s, and they started off down the street.

IV.

“There is no fucking reason to believe that God exists.” Maggie sounded angry, but she looked delighted. She looked, in fact, the way she sometimes looked before she and Dakin kindly showed Scripps to the door of an evening. She slammed her mug of tea down on the table and Scripps did his best not to look around to see how the other patrons were handling it; something told him that to look would be to admit a weakness. 

She continued, “Other than, I don’t know, following along with what some old man in a sheet tells you of a weekend, what do you actually have—what proof do you actually have—that makes you think there is order in the universe?”

“I don’t have proof,” said Scripps, much more quietly. He tried not to pick at his nails, or the unraveling sleeve of his sweater. Still, Maggie’s eyes snapped down to his lips, which he knew were chapped. He knew that, because when he had conversations like this, when he felt unfairly trapped on his back foot, he couldn’t stop wetting them. 

“How can you do it then,” said Maggie. “Day in and day out. Swallowing it all on someone’s say-so?”

“Babe,” he said. “It’s not about that. It’s about finding your own way to—”

“Don’t babe me, babe,” said Maggie. “I won’t be patronized by someone who still thinks we’re all being judged by some big daddy in the clouds. How do you square all that crap with your friend?”

“My friend,” said Scripps, his stomach already turning.

“Posner,” said Maggie. “How can you pretend to be his friend and then turn around and glad hand people who think he’s going straight to hell?”

This was a mistake. Scripps liked Maggie and he liked debate, so the idea of a rainy day spent here, with her, talking, had appealed. Now, though, it was as though he’d crossed a trip wire somewhere.

“I don’t think that’s fair,” said Scripps.

“I tend to think Posner would agree,” said Maggie, sitting back and crossing her arms. 

Scripps looked past her out the rainy window and tried to envision the miracle he knew must be happening somewhere. It would be deniable, but unmistakable. A flood narrowly missing a town. A mother reuniting with her lost child. A man in despair finding hope. 

“Well?” asked Maggie.

V.

His parents were surprised to see him, though they hid it well. They hid it by saying, “Well, this is a nice surprise,” rather than, “What are you doing home?” Scripps didn’t know what he was doing home. He didn’t know he was coming home for the weekend until it was Friday morning and he was standing at the station buying a ticket for the seven o’clock train.

“It’s just for the weekend,” he said, as if his parents were in any doubt about that. He had a tutorial on Monday. He had an editorial meeting. He needed to be back in Oxford.

He needed to be here. That’s what he woke up on Friday knowing, what he hadn’t known before. He’d gotten up and gone to the toilet and stared at himself in the mirror. Just stared. Finally, “You’re an idiot, babe,” he said. “A fucking idiot.” And he packed a bag.

Posner had a flat in town. It was cramped, and it smelled strongly of detergent thanks to the launderette downstairs, but it was his. Scripps cycled there. He didn’t think about what he’d say when he arrived. He didn’t think. He just watched the pavement whizz by. He watched the light hit the faces of the buildings in that way that meant home.

There, he buzzed Posner’s flat, and at first there was no answer, and he thought of the girl in the hall. “He’s gone.” But then there was a click and Posner’s tinny voice. “Yes?”

“It’s me,” said Scripps.

+I.  
And now there is another flat in London. It’s small: a slope-ceilinged sitting room, a kitchen unworthy of the name, a bedroom. Scripps gives it a thorough clean once a month. Posner helps when he can, puts everything away in the wrong place. This explains why Scripps’s notebook, when he goes to look for it, is with the cookbooks, though it doesn’t explain why the cookbooks have been rearranged to spell out F-U-C-K at eye level by author’s last name.

Dakin and his fiancée have been for dinner recently, though.

Scripps is writing a book. He’s been writing the same book for years; maybe he was always writing this book. The notebook is part of it. He jots down notes on the Tube on his way to and from work. It’s all adding up to something. These days he feels closer to it than he ever has before, but it’s still frustrating. He thought that by now he would be able to recognize a narrative as it unfolds. It was so difficult for so long to spot the story he was living. 

He thinks of himself, petrified, climbing Posner’s stairs.

“Oh, are you working?”

Scripps is surprised to see Posner up so early on a Saturday. He tries not to get his hopes up; Posner’s been switching from one medication to another and this could mean anything. It could be a temporary reprieve. Still, he isn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth. “Not really,” he says. “Thinking.”

Posner comes and sits next to him. He’s still warm from bed. Scripps leans against him, feels his breath come in and out. “What are you thinking about?” Posner asks.

“How long it took,” Scripps says. He doesn’t just mean the rush to the top of Posner’s stairs and the kiss that happened there. He means everything that followed; the slow slog to figure out what and how they were to each other.

“The blink of an eye,” says Posner. He presses a kiss to Scripps’s hairline. 

It’s nothing, really, but it still makes Scripps want to explain, again, for the hundredth, futile time, what it means that he gets to have this. But there is no succinct way to sum it all up, no perfect word to explain Posner, no term of endearment substantial enough. 

“I love you,” says Posner.

_Oh_ , Scripps thinks. _You idiot. Yes._

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * A [Restricted Work] by [ExtraTherese](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ExtraTherese/pseuds/ExtraTherese) Log in to view. 




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